Donald Trump's Relationships With Women

Women Are Revealing Their Bad Personal Experiences With Donald Trump

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has routinely made headlines for his controversial public comments about women. It’s left some of us to wonder: If these are the things he’s saying publicly, what on earth is going on behind closed doors?

A new article in The New York Times is addressing that very question. The Times interviewed numerous women who knew Trump in personal or professional capacities for the past few decades, painting a picture of his contradictory approach to dealing with women. The details are at times shocking, involving his invasion of women's intimate spaces, judgements of them based on physical attractiveness, and weight-shaming.

Carrie Prejean, a contestant from Trump's Miss USA pageant in 2009, recalled an instance where he made a personal inspection of the contestants, picking out some and humiliating others. “It became clear that the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not,” she told the Times. “Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating.” Another former girlfriend recalled being asked to judge the attractiveness of his ex-wives.

But other women who worked with Trump in professional capacities said that he had been a good mentor and colleague. They say he raised them to high positions and treated them with respect. “I think there are mischaracterizations about him,” Jill Martin, a vice president at the Trump Organization told the newspaper.

In his presidential campaign, Trump has been frequently criticized for what many see as misogynistic comments and personal attacks on women, including an infamous feud with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, in which he insinuated that her menstrual cycle was behind a perceived attack on him during a debate.